Poll: Dragon Age 2 Demo Impressions

[minispike47]

The Dragon Age 2 Demo has just been released on xbox 360 today and I?m disappointed. I loved DA:O. One of the bests features of DA:O was that I could micro-manage my party members special moves while each member performed basic attacks automatically.

My problem with the DA2 demo is that I have to constantly keep pressing the basic attack button. It makes the game feel like a hack n slash button basher rather than a deep and rich RPG. I can understand that by doing this bioware has opened up a wider audience, but I think that will alienate some of the fans of DA:O.

Anyway, I guess I will find out whether this can be changed in the options menu of the final product.

I'd like to know others opinions on the new mechanic. Do you think it will improve the overall experience? Or do you think that it is an unnecessary addition?

 

[Marowit]

The Dragon Age 2 Demo has just been released on xbox 360 today and I?m disappointed. I loved DA:O. One of the bests features of DA:O was that I could micro-manage my party members special moves while each member performed basic attacks automatically.

M

That was the part of the game that made me switch the difficulty to easy to be honest. I couldn't stand having to pause the game constantly, read after every action, in order to beat most encounters. Maybe it was my set up, maybe it was just the natural reaction of mine as I don't like to lose, but I can tell you in a 40hour game it got old real fast.

I wasn't going to DL the demo, but now I am intrigued. I also fall into the category of people who liked the combat changes in ME2 with respect to ME. But, I'm also the person who would rather have a strategic fight with another person - when I'm fighting a computer I just want to mow through them and enjoy a great story/world to explore.

 

[Zaik]

I'd love to spew venomous hate about everything Bioware does wrong that everyone else ignores for some odd reason, but I think they're on to me, the download keeps breaking.

 

[BENZOOKA]

Thanks for reminding. It seems like it's finally out for PC as well.

As for the count to million demos: It's looking good. They'll break that figure soon. 226 000 already and climbing steady.

 

[minispike47]

ii

The Dragon Age 2 Demo has just been released on xbox 360 today and I?m disappointed. I loved DA:O. One of the bests features of DA:O was that I could micro-manage my party members special moves while each member performed basic attacks automatically.

M

That was the part of the game that made me switch the difficulty to easy to be honest. I couldn't stand having to pause the game constantly, read after every action, in order to beat most encounters. Maybe it was my set up, maybe it was just the natural reaction of mine as I don't like to lose, but I can tell you in a 40hour game it got old real fast.

I wasn't going to DL the demo, but now I am intrigued. I also fall into the category of people who liked the combat changes in ME2 with respect to ME. But, I'm also the person who would rather have a strategic fight with another person - when I'm fighting a computer I just want to mow through them and enjoy a great story/world to explore.

That's what made me switch to nightmare right away. I love pausing and playing tactically. Don't we have enough button mashing action games already ??

I think it depends on how you want to play. As long as I have the option to have auto-attacks I i'll be happy

 

[darth.pixie]

I dislike Bioware and what they do...but I was actually entertained by the combat. Granted, I haven't tried most of the attacks and feats, but I did like what I've seen. I hope that the story will be as good too.

Edit: Reposting more in depth

Cons:


Animations are as weird as predicted..
The retcon darkspawn are even worse than predicted
Flemeth still looks weird
Dialogue wheel still sucks and you have too few options to express what you want. And they suck
It's still damn brown.
No spell combos

Pros:

I liked the models.
Faces on dialogue wheel helped a bit.
The voices seem a lot better than ME (or I may just say that because I hate Jennifer Hale)
I like the combat and the spells are awesome.

I'd like to add that it crashed twice, kept hitting me with LOADING...and I had 2 bugs. I hope they take care of that.

 

[Nimcha]

Yeah on PC auto-attacks are enabled. I like it, I do miss the tactical view which I also used when doing stuff in real-time but I'll get over that. It looks more flowing and more exciting, now all we need is a lot more abilities which looking at the talent trees is going to be the case.

 

[mattttherman3]

Yeah It is a nice addition, but there are not enough combat animations for characters, for every weapon, there is like 4 and that is it, which kind of bugs me. Also I will not be using the warrior ever in this game, rogue kicks so much ass, mage is pretty good too.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

honestly i find the style pretty awesome, granted i loved the pause and tactic approach, as kotor and DA:O are two of my favorite games ever, but when the full game comes out and you can do both, i will be giving a thumbs up to bioware for having both so both styles so that people can play as they like.

 

[Yarpie]

I loved the demo, to be honest. Combat actually feels interesting and I felt a lot more involved. A bit repetitive to spam the same button, sure, but everything felt so much more dynamic that I really didn't mind it too much.

The demo accomplished its mission: It got me really excited to play the full game. And yeah, soon enough this thread will probably be drowned in folks who will claim that Bioware has killed the RPG-genre (again), that it has been too dumbed down and that only console retards will enjoy the game. Me, I'll go back and play the demo again as another class!

 

[DustyDrB]

I'll just re-post my impression from the other Demo thread...

Just finished the 360 version's demo, my thoughts:

-Played as female Hawke, rogue and archer for most of the the demo.

-The first thing I notice, no more auto-attacking. It will take some getting used to but ultimately keeps me more engaged in the combat.

-The first section of the game I played dual-wielding and the rest of it as an archer. The former is more dazzling to look at and more exciting to participate in. Archery, on the other hand, was not so exciting. Despite my love of archery in Origins, it looks like I'm going to go dual-wielding in Dragon Age II.

-FemHawke has pretty eyes.

-The character animations and expressions are much more well done now. The small things like wrinkles around the eyes really go a long way towards selling character's emotions.

-The Wilds look a lot different than they did in the first game. This was a kind of sparse and honestly dull environment. I guess it was supposed to look ravaged by the Blight, though.

-I'm assuming we skipped around a good bit upon arriving to Kirkwall, as the pace went into overdrive. It was jarring, but I'm glad that part of the story is saved for when the actual game arrives.

- can't really say much about the story given how little we're given. However, it does looks to be engaging even though it won't be the typical BioWare epic.

- I'm really gonna like Isabella...

- Leveling up: It's different. Better or worse, I can't say yet. I do like that the game provides info such as critical chance, DPS, total mana/stamina and health.

- Final thoughts: The core combat will likely divide fans of Origins. The "press a button and something happens" approach is much more engaging to me and it doesn't seem that that aspect dumbs down combat at all. I'm still worried about how the inventory system will be done.

Edit: Didn't see the option to turn auto-attack on or off.

 

[minispike47]

I loved the demo, to be honest. Combat actually feels interesting and I felt a lot more involved. A bit repetitive to spam the same button, sure, but everything felt so much more dynamic that I really didn't mind it too much.

The demo accomplished its mission: It got me really excited to play the full game. And yeah, soon enough this thread will probably be drowned in folks who will claim that Bioware has killed the RPG-genre (again), that it has been too dumbed down and that only console retards will enjoy the game. Me, I'll go back and play the demo again as another class!

I hope that won't happen! I was only worried that auto-attacks would be in the full game.
I completely agree with you that it accomplished its mission. Despite my doubt I still have to game pre-ordered and I can't wait for it!

 

[Damiv]

Wheres my dwarf option? What do I have to press to be a dwarf? Where. Is. The. Dwarfs. ?.

Other than that (major) issue I can't say I like the feel of it so far. Seems like the story is much more linear than DA:O. I don't mind the combat change much, even though it makes the game feel less like an RPG and more like a action game. But no dwarf players? I am dissapoint. Still I have only tried the Xbox version so far, once I get the PC version downloaded I will see if the feel of the game is much different.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

I totally loved it, but, then again, I did love ME2 more than ME1, so I'm all for dumbing down, you could say.

And it did feel much simpler to me. But, the dialogue's great, the characters are awesome and the VA is looking to be top-notch. That makes me happy.

Also, totally unrelated, but I felt such joy when I saw that the fixed surname was "Hawke", imagining millions of people naming their characters "Mike" and laughing at it.

 

[Frenger]

In before the bioware haters,

Is it just me, or...

Anyone else get Jade Empire vibes from the PS3/Xbox360 version? I certainly do. Not sure I like the constant mashing of the A button during combat, tho. It's way to distracting and I keep forgetting about my other team-mates. Still, looks great and is actually really fun so far.The skilltrees look weird, but does the job I suppose.

And I, again, will miss the micromanagment of my characters, now that their inventory is all but gone. It didn't work in Mass Effect, but DA:O pulled it off without a hazzle. It was the best they've done since Neverwinter Nights (sort of, anyway). And now it's, well, not gone but way less important.

How is the PC version then?




Also, boobs!

 

[RejjeN]

Played the PC demo (as I don't have a 360, though I wouldn't have gotten that even if I did so... Whatever!)

From reading this thread it seems that the console demo doesn't have auto-attack enabled (by default anyhow, a lot of options were disabled for me so I didn't bother to look through it all) though it is on PC. Combat was surprisingly fast and while certain animations loop a little too much (Mage attack animation, looks incredibly silly when two mages stand right next to each others in perfect sync xD just a slight randomization in the animation would probably have fixed this problem (say, add 1 or 2 more animations that are interchanged with the other 'in-between' animations)) Just my opinion though.

Stuff looks a lot more polished this time around and the VA's seem really good, looking forward to the end product

 

[Booze Zombie]

Impressions? I'm buying this game.
I had a feeling the auto-attack wasn't meant to be turned off, anyway.